Lately things have been going well. This week, it's been kind of strange because I've been getting on average 12 hours of sleep per day. I'll sleep like 7 hours at night then binge sleep after class in the afternoon until dinner, then binge sleep some more after dinner. I've just been feeling really sluggish...almost as if I've been taking a medicine that causes drowsiness. Either way, the sleep is pretty great.

This is the Chaplain's house at Yale... It's a pretty neat house and it dates back to the pre-revolution era I believe and has been occupied by every Yale chaplain. Just a neat picture.

This is my "Structure of Networks" class that is so easy... We have 500 students enrolled in the class. 10% of the entire undergraduate student body is in this class, and maybe 30 students showed up to class. That's how much of a joke this is.  And the next picture is a picture of me and my two roommates, who were intently playing games on their phone during class.

This is the silhouette of Dwight Hall on the Old Campus, which used to be the old Yale Library up until the 1920s.

This is all my navigation books... I literally have more materials for this one course in navigation than I do for all other courses combined. It's a pretty chill course though. Basically, if we memorize the Rules of the road,  and then get proficient at maneuvering boards and radar navigation we get an A.

Wow, two weeks in already. Time is absolutely flying through this semester already. This afternoon I sat down and started thinking how peculiar it is that as humans we look at time as flexible - at some times in life time seems to fly by quicker than we could possibly imagine, like on vacation. At other points time seems to not be moving at all, like in a business meeting with that boss you hate or a tough class. However, never have I ever heard anybody say retrospectively that time passed slowly. Retrospectively, time always flies by... it is at a constant rate/speed of "too fast", which is simply put as 24 hours per day...I suppose that's why old people always say that you better enjoy life because it goes by quick. I kind of got to wondering why God programmed humans to look at time as a sort of an ongoing exponential function... going by slowly at first but always going faster as time goes on. It's kind of an irrational way to view life, but nonetheless it keeps things interesting.

This weekend I worked a film conference and decided to take some pictures of the building I was working in, not that it was particularly special...it's just that you run out of things to do when you spend 16 hours sitting in a desk and just have to 'supervise'. I also snapped some pictures of the sunrise Saturday morning on my walk through the city to get to work.

This is part of the structural supports for the theater we were using. From the looks of it, it must be Noah from the Bible perhaps? That looks an awful lot like an ark, not that I've ever seen a real ark... but IF I HAD seen an ark before, I bet that's what it would look like, haha.

 This is the theater we were using.

 This room is surprisingly warm and cozy for an office building. It's where we hosted the guests for meals, as suggested by the giant dining table.

Here's my collection of morning photos in New Haven. I had a thing for taking pictures in the middle of the street that morning. I really like the first picture... I feel like it captures New Haven in the winter very well. 

I found out the hard way last night that celestial navigation is no fun. I hope to God that I never have to use celestial navigation as my primary means of navigation while in the Navy, because it is way too frustrating. We had two chapters of navigation homework to do on the combined coordinate system along with celestial navigation and and all that stuff. I started at 11:30 pm, and I quickly realized it was going to be a long night. I then decided to send out a group message and I got together with about 8 other shipmates so we could work together, but this stuff is just impossible to do if you have no experience in it. So we ordered Papa Johns pizza and gave it our best shot. Around 3:00 am we finally finished, only to wake up at 6:45 to get in uniform and head to navigation.

I also finally got my combat boots that fit me properly and my service dress blue jacket a size larger so it will actually fit me. It's been half a year in the making, so I'm excited to finally get the proper sized uniform items. I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised by how warm my service dress blue uniform is when I wear the reefer coat, scarf, gloves and ear muffs. The wind chill hasn't changed at all, unfortunately, and we are expecting more snow in the next few days, so with negative temperatures as the windchill and more snow, I'm glad to have the winter components of the uniform. Money well spent.

I'm also getting an insane amount of work hours this week... between last night, today and tomorrow I'm getting about 23 hours of work, and at $14 an hour it's darn good money for a college student. Especially when my work consists of sitting in an office doing my homework, eating food and making sure nobody dies during the conference. That's pretty much my job. 

I think I have found my new goal in life: I want to grow up to be that old man that did SO much in life...went  to so many places, did so many things, and met so many people, that there is no way I could ever run out of cool stories to tell while I'm in a nursing home (or wherever I end up). You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm 100% serious.
I took some pictures today as I walked around in the -12 degree windchill. Honestly, the buildings around campus seem much more photogenic in the snow and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap some pictures:

 This is the World War I memorial at Beinecke Plaza, I thought it looked neat in the snow.

This is walking out of Pierson College, my residential college. I think I have explained before, but basically the freshman at Yale are assigned a residential college, but due to limited space, most freshmen live on the Old Campus until sophomore when they move into their respective residential colleges.

This the Pierson lower court. It's known for looking much different than the rest of the college, and was referred to as the Pierson slave quarters until the mid-1980s by students and faculty alike. We don't call it that anymore, for obvious reasons of course. This is where seniors live.

Another picture of Pierson.

More Pierson.

This is practically an overdose on pictures of Pierson. So sorry.

Too much snow.

This is Connecticut Hall, as I mentioned yesterday... the oldest building at Yale.

I decided to take a detour through Jonathan Edwards College, another residential college, and you can see Harkness Tower from their courtyard.

This is beautiful Lanman-Wright Hall ("L-Dub") where I live. 

If you have a very keen eye while walking around campus, you notice some pretty neat things. Today I noticed the original year-stamped bricks with the year 1750 on them from when Connecticut Hall was built. Check it out. 

You can see the same year-stamped bricks from more of a distance now.

And this is the final destination of my new "NO SOLICITING" sign. Me and my roommates tend to be like grumpy old men...we generally don't like to be bothered while in our room chilling and studying. Although we are considering getting a "No Loitering" sign...there has been a recent issue of very loud and obnoxious girls loitering right in front of our door. I'm only halfway kidding about the "No Loitering" sign. 

This structure of networks class is way too good to be true. Today the professor said don't bother coming to lectures because he was having everything video recorded and will post the lectures online. Not even a final exam.

When class was over, I walked outside to find that it had started snowing during class. Now we've got lots of snow and it's way too cold. My ears started burning on the way to work this afternoon (I had left my hat in my bedroom), and as I looked at the weather on my phone I noticed the windchill was -8 degrees Fahrenheit. No wonder my ears were burning cold. Here's some pictures of the snow:
                                           as always, you can click on the picture to enlarge it.

Above is Calhoun College, one of the 12 residential colleges at Yale. 

This is a building with classes.

Berkeley College is pictured above, another one of the 12 residential colleges.

This is the Old Campus of Yale. Far off in the center of the picture is Connecticut Hall, the oldest building at Yale, where Nathan Hale, Noah Webster (Webster's Dictionary), Eli Whitney and President William H. Taft lived as students. It was built in 1752.

And the picture above is my suite from the outside looking in. Wonderful Lanman-Wright Hall, colloquially known as "L-Dub" by students. It is the newest building on the Old campus, built in 1912. Fortunately my residential college's side of Lanman-Wright was renovated this summer, while Berkeley's side (Both Pierson and Berkeley share Lanman-Wright Hall) was not renovated. Berkeley students often try to come over to the Pierson side to shower and use the bathroom, so we keep the connecting doors locked. Gotta keep the East Berliners out of West Berlin, eh? 

Today I got lots of reading done for my South Asia in Politics class (120+ pages), and it was pretty boring... not gonna lie. It was really dense material on the buildup to the partition of India. My saving grace in this class? My professor is arguably the cutest old lady in the history of cute old ladies. We're not talking about the average "granny with cookies" stereotype - even cuter than that. So even though it's a 2 hour seminar, I think I can manage.

Yalies are too eager. Way too eager. Annoyingly eager. They are always knocking on your door asking for support for their political cause, charitable cause, academic cause, and anything in between. It gets very frustrating when you're working on an econ problem set and some overly eager Yalie storms in and knocks on your door, introducing themselves (although they've knocked on your door twice in the past week anyways, so we of course know each other's name) and asking you to sign your name supporting them. Trust me, it happens more often than it should. So, over Christmas break I bought a "NO SOLICITING" sign from Office Depot and it has worked wonders thus far. I know, I sound like a grumpy old man, but I really don't care.

Yesterday I got mochi ice cream with my roommates to celebrate one of them getting into a senior seminar as a freshman, which is quite the feat. Mochi ice cream is a japanese dessert...it is technically a rice compound surrounding ice cream. That doesn't do it justice. Let me give my explanation of mochi ice cream: so take a super large marshmallow (the kind you use for huge s'mores at a bonfire of course). Put in in a freezer for a while so it gets cold, but not hard. Then hollow it out and fill it with delicious ice cream. That's mochi ice cream, and it's pretty darn good. Here's what it looks like:

 The flavors shown are raspberry-white chocolate, and two chocolate-peanut butter ones. 

I was walking through one of the buildings where I routinely work, and noticed a peculiar wood carving yesterday. On one of the bench seats in a main hallway I noticed a dragon carving on the handle of the bench. Check it out:

Also, I want to say that the radiator heat we have in the old buildings on campus seems to keep buildings much more cozy than central air, although it seems like it may pose a threat to children that could fall against the radiator. In the older buildings we just have these grates covering the radiators, but the rooms still get SO warm:

And I passed Grove Street Cemetery today, which I believe is the first planned cemetery in America. As I walked past the entryway, I noticed a very strange quote in the stone. "The Dead Shall Be Raised" 

Click on the pic to enlarge it

Today me and two of my roommates went on a run to East Rock Park in Hamden, CT. I think it's something like 7 miles total, so not too bad. I did realize just how out of cardio-shape I got over Christmas break. It was a struggle to keep pace with my roommate, who is a collegiate rower and runs about 2 hours on the treadmill every day. I made it, but it wasn't pretty...at all. On the other hand, the park was really nice and pretty.

My roommates and I decided to do it every Sunday afternoon, so we can all stay in shape. And then of course we run lots of 1 or 2 mile runs throughout the week. But lemme tell ya, doing longer runs gets you in much better shape. 

So anyways, I just got done reading a few chapters on dead reckoning and proper maneuvering board procedures from the Watch Officer's Guide. Gotta love navigation class. 

I got the offer to go underway on the USCGC Eagle...the Coast Guard Academy training vessel that is the former Nazi naval training schooner that we captured after the war. It would be over spring break, and I just can't reconcile with myself taking time out of my spring break with my family. It would be lots of fun to get underway on the only steel-hulled sailship in American military service. I do suspect that we will an opportunity to do it again next year or junior or senior year. Either way, it's neat to get the invitation. I guess a lot of people would love to go out on a ship and be an old-school crusty sailor for a few days. 

So recently there has been a lot of controversy over the Yale administration shutting down a website made by students to compare courses offered by a number of ratings, including professor ratings and workload. This website, before shut down, has resulted in classes given an incredibly low workload ranking to fill up with 200+ students. Yes, even Yalies love an easy class. Yale blocked the website from their servers and decided to cite copyright issues and "malicious intent" supposedly as reasoning. The funny thing is, our student programmers are much better than the administration's programmers, and today a student released a new web extension that uses Yale's official (much less helpful) course listing website against itself and rigs the website to rank classes according to workload and professor ratings. I really love the ingenuity of our computer science majors. 

I'm loving this 3-day weekend. I've gotten lots of reading done, and it has been pretty chill.

Yesterday in my lecture with Professor Shiller, he quoted Ecclesiastes 5:18. I'd say it's pretty epic when your professor quotes the Bible at Yale.

Other than that, nothing rreally new has happened... this weekend should be pretty chill for me.

Sorry for skipping a day... I'm still getting used to my new schedule.

So last night I suited up and played intramural basketball with my buddies. It quickly went from intramural basketball to an all-out brawl game. First, just imagine what you think a typical Yale student looks like. Keep going. If you're picturing a spindly 5'7" guy with glasses and a hunch from sitting at the computer too long, you're spot on. Now imagine about 9 of those guys out on a court playing basketball. Yeah, it was kinda funny.
As we got playing, the other team started playing really rough. First off, my buddy got kneed in his kneecap and went down and was out for the game. His knee swelled up really badly. Next, As I was driving in for a layup I got an elbow to the nose and the blood started flowing. A few minutes later another teammate went up for a shot and got yanked back down and ended up having his ACL torn. We had to call in the ambulance and they rushed him to the hospital. Not the best game of basketball ever.

I just found out that CAPTAIN PHILLIPS IS COMING TO SPEAK TO OUR NROTC UNIT THIS SPRING. Yes, THE Captain Phillips...the Captain Phillips that was taken hostage by Somali pirates, and then the Navy SEAL snipers killed three terrorists at the same time, bobbing up and down on the fantail of a destroyer...on Easter sunday. That Captain Phillips. I'm so excited. SO excited. Here is a link to a Navy recruitment commercial that has captain phillips' rescue in it...it's the first thing on the commercial. Just click the link to watch the commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga9bgwVIefQ

And this is old campus with Harkness tower in the background yesterday... I was waiting on one of my meetings to start and decided to take a picture.

And oh so quickly my first semester is gone. I'm already shopping classes for this semester and am studying. Originally I had planned on taking a course in Game Theory, but this morning I decided not to after considerable thought and prayer. INSTEAD, me and my two roommates found a course from the Applied Mathematics department called "Structure of Networks" which covers the structure of everything from terrorist networks to internet networks. According to the student reviews it is incredibly easy and official rankings for workload were a 1/5 with 60% of students stating that the course was "Significantly less" work than the average Yale course. The best part is, it actually looks like a respectable course to take, so it won't make me look lazy on my transcript.

Today I spent about 2.5 hours sewing part of my Navy uniform. I finally got my peacoat in the mail and had to take off the black buttons for enlisted personnel and sew on the gold buttons for officers and then sew two loops on each shoulder for the hard shoulder boards. I have to admit, it looks pretty good. Job well done. I may as well change my name to Betsy Ross and take up sewing for a living (totally kidding).

I am going from intro single variable calculus which I took last semester to multi-variable calculus this semester, and there is a class in between that students are supposed to take. Since I wanted to skip that course, I had to go an advising session this morning and ask permission to skip. When I walked in, the professor I wanted (the one with the best ratings) was sitting there, and in order to get her to let me skip the middle calc class, I had to explain that originally since the Navy requires only 2 semesters of calculus, I just wanted to take the two easiest classes and be done.
 To do so, I purposefully bombed the math placement exam over the summer, which still got me placed in the middle calc class, so I dropped to the intro calc last semester anyways. Now, I need to take multi-variable calc for my Math major anyways, so I need to take it and would rather take it. I had to explain how I WOULD HAVE placed into multi-variable calc if I had actually tried on the placement test.

Needless to say, the math professor I wanted as my teacher was NOT happy or impressed by my actions. My buddy was sitting there stifling a laugh the entire time. She finally let me jump into multi-variable calculus but only after a proper tongue-lashing in her very thick Russian accent. As me and my buddy walked out of her office, he said "dude, you always get yourself in these positions... you truly are talented at getting into uncomfortable situations."

Today was also my first class with the Nobel Prize winner, Robert Shiller, founder of the S&P/Case-Shiller housing index. Prof. Shiller is absolutely hilarious and truly excited to teach freshmen (for the first time in his career). Plus, a lot of my friends are in the class.

The way my schedule works out (if everything works the way I hope) then I only have one class on Mondays, from 1 to 2:15.  Additionally, only a Navy activity on fridays and no college classes. Such a sweet schedule.

Here's a pretty cool picture I snapped as we were landing in New York yesterday:

 (Again, you can click the picture to enlarge it)

at the bottom you see two bridges, with the one on the left being the Brooklyn Bridge. The tallest building is the almost-finished Freedom Tower, also known as One World Trade Center. It is truly a powerful addition to the New York skyline.

The guy at the luggage counter didn't like that my seabag was 48 pounds... According to him, "48 pounds is 48 pounds too heavy."

And here are some pictures from Christmas break including my girlfriend and I at Robins AFB, Christmas Eve, and one of my mornings that I spent hunting:

I'm excited for another great semester and a really enjoyable time.